- August 18th, 2008
- Filed under Art, Current Events, Education, Film
Both Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence) and Trey Parker (Team America: World Police) have said it in so many words: Freedom isn’t free.
Ask IMA CEO Maxwell Anderson about the price of freedom. He’ll tell you about the IMA’s successful challenge to a law passed by the Indiana legislature this year forcing any entity selling materials deemed “harmful to minors” to register with the State and pay a fee to do so. If Judge Sarah Evans Barker had not agreed with the IMA, Big Hat Books, and other plaintiffs and struck down the restrictive law, every school with a sex ed text book—or art museum gift shop with books featuring the nude form—would have had to pay up and be policed.
Ask Indianapolis educator Connie Heermann about the price of freedom. Connie is the Perry Township teacher suspended without pay for teaching the book The Freedom Writers Diary in her class last year without permission from the school board. The book, written by the students of California teacher Erin Gruwell, is a record of their daily lives, fraught with violence and racism. This work of non-fiction contains profanity and bloodshed–because that’s what these teens experienced.
Filmmaker Richard LaGravenese (Living Out Loud, Freedom Writers) turned the story of Erin Gruwell and herstudents into a film starring Hilary Swank. In a Huffington Post blog entry last month, LaGravenese makes a passionate defense of the liberty to learn.
In the spirit of the First Amendment, the IMA is hosts a screening of the film Freedom Writers and a post-film discussion with Connie Heermann. Come to the IMA August 21 at 6 pm to hear about an all-too-real struggle for free expression in Indiana. Dissenters welcome.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
I just wanted to say that Connie is very excited about appearing at your great museum tomorrow. I, of course, will be right there beside her — and very proud!
This has been a difficult ordeal for the both of us. But Erin Gruwell said something when she testified on Connie’s behalf during her Board hearing last March that has stuck with me. She told the board: “something bigger is happening here. There will be good that will become of this.” At the time she said it, I thought she was being much too optimistic. Now I’m beginning to understand what she meant…
See you all tomorrow!
Tom Heermann
husband of suspended teacher Connie Heermann