books ...BANNED books? Support Our FREEDOM to READ!

Banned books? That is not the American way.

I believe now is a crucial time for us to take a stand against Book Censorship in the USA!

Are you also interested in helping those who are experiencing memory loss, dementia, Alzheimer's and related health issues?

You can take action NOW to help a 65-year-old Gentleman who has devoted much of his life to these important causes, a Gent who is experiencing his own health crisis. Let's support Steven and his fighting spirit!

If you are opposed to book banning in our libraries and schools, please keep reading to learn how you can help a First Amendment advocate get through a Rough Patch and, hopefully, continue his non-profit work in defense of the freedom to read.

Steven Pico is a trailblazing individual who took on the book banners, and defeated them.

Steven Pico is the ONLY American who can say he successfully challenged his local Board of Education all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. He won his book-banning case!

After Steven initiated "Pico v. Board of Education" -- a legal battle which took almost 6 years to resolve -- all of the banned books were returned to library shelves without restriction. That is why the New York Times once described Steven Pico as a "hero" and the Philadelphia Inquirer chose the headline "He made a federal case of his love for books."

Even though I have lived in Europe since I was born in 1991, I have learned so much about American history from the articulate activism of Steven Pico.

That's correct, Steven's fight against book banning is even well known in Europe and beyond.

When I discovered that Steven was in need of help following the pandemic, I felt I should reach out to good people like you, to seek your help on behalf of this principled man and the important causes he has championed.

By profession, Steven (shown above in front of his sculpture) is a painter, sculptor, and editor. I mention this fact because fighting the book banners over the past 48 years can best be described as Steven's life-long passion, not his vocation.

Steven also does non-profit work to help Americans dealing with dementia, Alzheimer's and memory slippage, and to assist their caregivers. Over the past 5 years Steven has developed a non-profit blog designed to use "ART as a Form of THERAPY" in order to allow people who have limited access to museums to enjoy art from the best museums.

In addition to helping others and creating his own art (above), Steven continues to speak out against the banning of books and all forms of censorship.

He continues to inspire others to defend everyone's freedom to read and educate themselves in a free and democratic society. "The truth is I am just one voice among 350 million," Steven said, "however, when any one individual stands up to autocratic control, or any form of tyranny, I believe a victory has already been achieved."

I set up this Go Fund Me page because Steven needs your help and your support as soon as possible to overcome his financial pressures.

Steven lost his parents to illness in years past and has no immediate family in the U.S.A. He lost his job as an editor at the outset of the pandemic in March 2020 and never recovered financially. Like most people age 65, he is facing several health issues (including heart, circulatory, and thyroid problems) and the related medical expenses. With large thyroid nodules pressing against his larynx, two cytopathology reports came back as "inconclusive" about which Steven's doctor wrote: "It came out as Bethesda Class 3 -- which means there were atypical cells of unknown significance ... Class 4 and 5 is malignant." Nevertheless, Steven remains energized and resilient.

I realize a lot of people have retreated from the fight to preserve our freedoms because the political scene has become so toxic, with families and communities divided. Steven, since age 17, has continued to defend books, and he stands with the parents, authors, teachers, and librarians who are now on the front lines of the Right-to-Read Movement that Steven initiated in the 1970s.

In November 2023, I attended THE NEW PRESS SOCIAL JUSTICE AWARDS ceremony where Steven Pico (above) was honored "for a lifetime of fighting against censorship." Past winners of this honor include Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.

In years past, Steven has also been recognized by the Writers Guild of America, East "for his valiant fight against censorship" and by the American Library Association for "strong commitment and defense of the principles of intellectual freedom and the right to read."

If you believe that federal and local governments abuse their power (and politicians VIOLATE YOUR RIGHTS) when they ban books from stores, schools and community libraries, I hope you will join me and my family to support Steven Pico -- a private citizen who has been an eloquent defender of our Constitutional freedoms for nearly five decades.

YOU CAN VIEW A VIDEO

You do not have to take my word on this. By clicking on the LINK below you can view a 5-minute clip from a PBS debate between Steven and a politician who banned books:

Steven's response to this book banner was straight-forward. Steven asked, "What is so MORAL about labeling a novel 'anti-American' and banning it from a High School library simply because in it a teacher tells his students the historical fact that George Washington owned slaves?"

Steven explained: "As a teenager, I found this library book particularly interesting because it taught me something new, a fact I had never learned in any classroom. In his Last Will and Testament dated 1799, George Washington ordered freedom for all of his 124 slaves AFTER his (and his wife's) death. 'Why after?,' I thought, and 'did Martha also free all of the slaves she owned and the slaves she inherited?' -- That's an important topic for students to discuss, I thought."

HOW YOU CAN TAKE ACTION:

If Steven Pico is the kind of American you would like to help and support, you can CLICK "Donate now" in the sidebar (at right) or scroll down to the bottom of this page and make a donation there.

Your support will help Steven meet his day-to-day living expenses, receive the medical care he needs (now and in years to come) and get back on his feet financially. PLEASE HELP, if you can, by making a donation now. You may click "Donate now," and I assure you that no gift is too small.

TO LEARN MORE about book banning in the USA, please keep reading.

As a 17-year-old High School student, Steven took book banners to Federal court from 1977 through 1982 (and won!) to protect the following 11 books (two of which won the Pulitzer Prize):

Go Ask Alice (by an anonymous author)

The Naked Ape (Desmond Morris)

Laughing Boy (Oliver LaFarge)

Soul On Ice (Eldridge Cleaver)

Down These Mean Streets (Piri Thomas)

The Best Short Stories by Black Writers (edited by Langston Hughes)

A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich (Alice Childress)

Black Boy (Richard Wright)

The Fixer (Bernard Malamud)

A Reader for Writers, including "A Modest Proposal" (Jonathan Swift)

Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)

At historic St. Paul's Church in Westchester NY in 1982 -- 20 years after President John F. Kennedy designated December 15, 1962 as "Bill of Rights Day" -- Steven Pico was presented the John Peter Zenger First Amendment Award, named for a printer and newspaper publisher who was arrested in 1734 for disseminating true stories about fraud in a local election. Zenger was wrongly accused of libel by the governor. Zenger's victory at trial was the first decision supporting freedom of the press in the Colonial United States.

In the 1920s, the U.S. Post Office confiscated and burned 500 copies of an American journal containing portions of "Ulysses" and this James Joyce novel was banned in the United States until a court ruled in 1933 that it was not pornographic.

More recently, you may have learned that "Maus" by Art Spiegelman, "All Boys Aren't Blue" by George M. Johnson, the novel "Forever" by Judy Blume and the poem "The Hill We Climb" by Amanda Gorman have been attacked and censored in 2022, 2023 and 2024 in the U.S.A.

You might be surprised to learn of the many important books which have been banned from libraries & schools across the United States in recent years, including:

The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank)

1984 (George Orwell)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

The Color Purple (Alice Walker)

Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

Native Son (Richard Wright)

Beloved, The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)

Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)

This One Summer (Mariko Tamaki)

Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury).

Since his victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982, Steven has continued to speak out eloquently in defense of the Constitutional rights of parents, educators, writers, librarians, students, authors, publishers, journalists, and ALL citizens.

For example, Steven spoke with library officials at the Glen Ridge Public Library in New Jersey in February 2023 just before the Library Board voted unanimously to keep in circulation 6 books (that a group had asked to be banned) including Mr. George M. Johnson's "All Boys Aren't Blue." For several years, Steven has also worked with the plaintiffs and lawyers in Llano County, Texas to combat book censorship in the County's Public Library system. Steven met with the lead plaintiff in this Texas lawsuit in 2024. You may want to follow this important case as it moves through the federal courts in 2025, or DO WHAT STEVEN IS NOW DOING: encourage your state legislators and members of Congress to pass laws protecting books (and laws respecting the rights of parents who want their children to receive a well-rounded education).

You may wonder why book banning is so common if Steven won his case. Good question!

The actions by the School Board in Steven's case can best be viewed as an attempt by government officials to limit the free speech rights of certain groups within our society, an attack on free "political speech" in order to silence the perspectives of certain classes of citizens (such as African-American, female, gay, and Jewish authors). In Steven's case, members of the Supreme Court limited their opinions to books used in school libraries, so the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to definitively consider the issue of attempts to ban books used in curriculum, in public libraries, in grammar schools, etc. or under standards other than the political, personal and religious objections stated by the Board of Education members in Steven's school who called the 11 books "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semetic [sic], and just plain filthy."

YOUR DONATION

Your support will help Steven meet his medical and living expenses.

With such pressures relieved, my hope is that Steven will be able to devote more time to his valuable work against censorship, and to continue his project to use Art as a form of Therapy -- which is directed to reach anyone who is home bound, in a medical facility, or for any reason misses being able to travel and visit museums. I know for a fact that Steven's art project brings joy to our neighbors and family members facing Memory Loss. You can view it for free at www.artloverstravel.com

Steven's art blog also provides a valuable tool for caregivers. Visual stimulation helps maintain a healthy mind and body, especially for those challenged by conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer's.

Art Therapy can help individuals recall memories, and it increases both concentration and focus. Steven believes that viewing art (and creating artwork) assists in processing emotions, and encourages communication, sharing. Art as a form of Therapy has been shown to have a positive effect on mood by lowering an individual’s cortisol levels, which are responsible for controlling fear, mood, and motivation.

At the age of 17, Steven Pico stood firm in his belief that "the right to read a book is implicit in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution" and, as a High School student (with Kurt Vonnegut by his side) Steven announced that he was filing a lawsuit seeking the return of all the banned books to his school library, including Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five."

We have all learned that our Constitutional rights can be taken away from us -- unless we take action as Steven did and as Steven continues to do.

Truth be told, Steven remains a hero to people across the political spectrum -- conservatives, libertarians, liberals, independents, moderates, members of various religious and political persuasions -- all of whom understand what was at stake when Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. declared "Our Constitution does not permit the official suppression of ideas." {Board of Education, Island Trees v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982)}

Steven stood before the 7 members of the Board of Education in Washington, D.C. (above) in 1982, when the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the legal action Steven initiated in 1977. Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. (joined by Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens with concurrences by Byron White and Harry Blackmun) wrote the principal opinion in Steven Pico's case.

In the landmark "Pico" decision, Brennan wrote, "we hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion'."

Yes, book banning is on the rise; however, I believe there are many Independents, Republicans and Democrats who believe that censorship is incompatible with our free society.

A Reader for Writers, the anthology banned by the Island Trees Board of Education in New York, included John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, the U.S. Declaration of Independence and a letter written by Nobel Peace Prize-winner Martin Luther King, Jr. This book was banned from the school library because School Board members objected to Jonathan Swift's 1729 satirical essay "A Modest Proposal" (which they believed was "in bad taste") and a Robert Penn Warren essay on Malcolm X. The Board of Education said that speaking well of Malcolm X was "anti-American" since they felt he was "a traitor" to his country. In legal depositions, the publicly-elected School Board members admitted they never read any of the books they voted to ban, and that no one in the community of Island Trees (New York) had ever raised an objection or complained about any of the 11 books. The Board relied solely on a list of books received from outside its jurisdiction.

Since 1976, Steven Pico has spoken out nationwide against censorship and shepherded his legal case through the courts for six years, until the Island Trees Board of Education voted to return all of the books to the library shelves following Steven's victories in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and at the U.S. Supreme Court. By the time the Supreme Court issued its ruling (1982), Steven had already completed his B.A. degree from Haverford College; he then worked for three years at the non-profit National Coalition Against Censorship.

Steven sought only the return of the books to the library shelves, where library patrons could choose to read these books (or patrons could choose not to read them); he never sought monetary reward. For reasons such as these, people around the world still look to the U.S.A. as a beacon of freedom and a model for quality education.

Even though I was born and educated in Europe, I have started this fundraiser to show my appreciation for Steven Pico, a U.S. citizen who is widely admired in many countries.

In these difficult political and economic times, I believe the United States remains a symbol of freedom around the world. However, to maintain liberties, individuals must demonstrate the courage to defend our freedoms in a peaceful manner. That is exactly what Steven Pico has accomplished over the past 48 years.

I have organized this fundraiser as a way to say THANK YOU to an American citizen for standing up for what is right, for defending the rights of everyone to learn and to educate themselves, and for peacefully opposing government attempts to limit freedom of thought.

I hope you agree that the right to freely read books is one of your most basic and precious freedoms. While preparing this fundraiser, I came across many speeches given by Steven Pico to warn people about the dangers of censorship.

When Steven spoke at a remembrance of the Nazi book burnings, held at a library in New York, he said "I am here because I share a common experience with those who lived in Germany in the 1930s. Growing up in the United States, I too have seen people who are afraid of ideas, afraid of books. Living in the United States, I have lived in a country where books are banned and burned. Some books describe painful truths, the reality experienced by people in their daily lives. Censors argue that certain books offend them, and I respectfully respond: Life cannot always be portrayed tastefully. There is no tasteful way to express life in a ghetto or in a concentration camp. Such truths should be depicted realistically."

From my point of view, Steven is both courageous and principled. He refused to stand by and do nothing while the voices of some authors were being silenced. He said, "The basic premise behind book-banning is that IDEAS ARE DANGEROUS. Today, there are people across many countries who are saying 'I know which ideas are right, and which are wrong. Our schools will not teach wrong ideas. Our citizens will not read wrong books.' We are here today because we have heard this language before. Heinrich Heine once wrote, 'Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.' On May 10, 1933, the first of many book burnings occurred in Nazi Germany. Now we know that a great German poet was right: WHERE THEY BURN BOOKS, THEY WILL ALSO ULTIMATELY BURN PEOPLE."

Some people in the USA today are trying to hide and distort our history, to deny history. Some politicians are using books as a tool to advance their own careers, to scare parents, to divide communities, and to deceive voters. Are teachers, librarians and books the most serious issues we have to face in our public schools today?

You know that our educators and librarians have the best interests of our children at heart. If you as a parent feel that a certain book is not the best choice for your child, then speak with your teacher and work together to choose the best material. Censorship is not the answer.

Most people who challenge books do not even have children in our public schools; nor have they read books in their entirety.

Steven's parents wanted their son to receive a well-rounded, comprehensive, and wide-ranging education. Steven and his parents trusted their teachers and librarians. Some citizens are willing to allow politicians and courts to take away their basic rights and our basic freedoms. If you feel as I do that book banning is a serious mistake, please help me raise funds for the well-being of Steven -- to defray the costs of his medical and living expenses.

Thank you for listening. Please donate whatever you can.